Old Mole Variety Hour

The Old Mole burrows down to the roots of the great issues of our time – the struggles of ordinary people for democratic and sustainable ways of life. The Mole goes where corporate media fear to tread, supporting grassroots challenges to top-down authority and giving voice to movements that shake the foundations of an unjust society. The Moles' perspective is democratic, broadly socialist, and feminist. (We count Karl Marx as a friend).

Celebrate Membership Drive by tuning in to an Old Mole climate change special: Mark Herstsgaard on the threat of climate change and also the many reasons for hope including the growth of our movements; Mark Jacobson on how, if we mobilize our resources, we can eliminate fossil fuel burning for energy within 15 years; John Ferrell on the great superiority of local democratically run decentralized sun and wind power production; and also an Old Mole Roundtable on strategy for winning, on climate change and other critical environmental struggles."
Image from Wikipedia: This time series, based on satellite data, shows the annual Arctic sea ice minimum since 1979. The September 2010 extent was the third lowest in the satellite record.

This episode of the Old Mole will be hosted by Clayton Morgareidge and will give you incisive and critical commentary on Syria, Obamacare, the impending government shutdown, food stamps and class, and more.

Bill Resnick speaks with Paula Rabinowitz, who just competed a 4 volume series on clothes and accessories, how people use them to create identities, identify selves, resist subordination, and generally communicate. They examine the 20th century, beginning with the use of hats and purses to signal and fight for the liberated (somewhat) woman. They conclude with today’s masquerade, way beyond accessories for the middle class, as people experiment with materials to construct themselves, and what that could come to mean when strong commitments and clear political choices become necessary when both a left and fascists forces contest for power.

Social Security, "Fruitvale Station", and money and political cynicism

Tom Becker hosts this show featuring Bill Resnick interviewing Max Richtman about the need to defend and extend both Social Security and Medicare; our Movie Moles reviewing Fruitvale Station; Clayton Morgareidge presenting an argument from David Graeber about how deeply money controls politics and how to overcome the resulting cynicism from both Right and Left about politics; and Tom reading from the left press.

Audio

Hosted by Frann Michel (pictured here), this program is about climate change, science fiction, and science fiction about climate change, but it is not about the illusion that climate change is itself science fiction. This is a show that should be heard from beginning to end, although the parts are available separately below. Frann Michel's three commentaries are packaged together, along with appropriate songs by jazz great Ella Fitzgerald.

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To hear the whole show, use the play button below. To hear individual pieces and find more information, follow these links:

Today's show ran the gamut from water conservation to oily devastation to the double-edge of postmodern autonomy, with a final romp by our Movie Moles through the Ozarks. Our host, Clayton Morgareidge, selected some bluegrass music to accent the plight of those who just want some "Cool Water," and of those in "Moneyland."

Below are links to the individual segments [in progress], and below those the whole show including transitions.

When Marx was writing his grim analyses of Capitalism 150 years ago, workers did not have much if any autonomy. The labor movement gave workers the leverage to determine some of the terms of their livelihood, and since the 1970s progressive management theory has given more credit to self-management. The cybernetic revolution seems to have completed this great levelling, but in today's Well Read Red Joe Clement reads from Rob Horning's very recent "Autonomism Explained." Horning recalls the potential and pitfalls of Nick Dyer-Witheford's vision of worker autonomy in his 1994 essay, "Autonomist Marxism and the Information Society."

Bill Resick talks with Chuck Sheketoff of the Oregon Center for Public Policy about the great recession in Oregon and the looming cuts in social services. What can and should be done? Sheketoff is one of the founders of the OCPP where you can keep up with state issues from a progressive angle.

What are the most fundamental causes of the current economic crisis? Radical anthropologist David Harvey provides a lucid account of how this crisis and others are the result of capitalism’s inevitable compulsion to expand itself into a state of collapse, and argues that the only sane thing to do is to join an anti-capitalist movement. In this piece, Joe Clement introduces and presents parts of a lecture of Harvey's that explains in Marxist terms how we got into the mess we're in now.

Check out the animated video that accompanies the lecture on Harvey's website, where you can also find a whole course devoted to Marx's Capital.

David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Director of The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and author of numerous books. He has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for nearly 40 years.

Movie Moles Frann Michel and Jan Haaken give you the real and radical viewing of Toy Story 3: it's about the great recession, the fear of unemployment, and the fear of being tossed in the dump when you're no longer new. It even shows the way forward towards a world of cooperation and solidarity.

This show, hosted by Clayton Morgareidge, responds to the insane drive to cut social spending by governments at a time when people have been left high and dry, or homeless and hungry, by the absurd situation that capital has created: vast wealth that cannot be invested, millions of people with no jobs, and lots of work that needs to be done to keep our communities and our planet together. We look at the shortfall in the Oregon state budget and the cuts that are coming, and what should be done instead. We hear a lucid historical account of how the world has been led to this point by capitalist growth. And we learn how to see Toy Story 3 as a depiction of depression and hope in these hard times.

It's convenient to have the Old Mole audio files available.
Even more useful for some of us would be transcripts of the commentaries (Clayton Morgareidge). Written material allows a person a chance to review, consider, digest and refer to mentioned references & thinkers. The "Well Read Red" commentary from 4 Aug 08 is a good example of a piece I'd like to read at my own pace.